This article was contributed by Amanda Bray Cody, 8th grade teacher at St. John Regional Catholic School in Frederick, MD.
Catholic educators attending the Eileen Ludwig Greenland Bearing Witness Institute visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today as part of their third day of intensive study of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Participants had opportunities to make personal connections with the Holocaust victims by hearing stories and viewing pictures and artifacts. One participant tweeted a picture of a pile of shoes that remained after the people were destroyed. She noted a dingy red shoe on top of the pile in contrast to the bright red pair of shoes she had chosen to wear today. I was drawn in by the two-story display of photographs — boys chopping wood, families sitting around a table, siblings posing for pictures in the snow — just like pictures we might take today. The people in the photographs were from a Jewish community in Lithuania, maybe not too far from where my own husband’s relatives lived before emigrating to the United States. I can imagine that most of my peers could make some personal connection as they viewed the exhibit.
Upon return to Georgetown University, heads nodded as Father Dennis McManus rightly pointed out that our training had provided us with, “more skill to really see into the exhibit.” Participants took time to reflect and process the experience individually in Georgetown’s chapel and then in small group discussions. After this emotionally and academically challenging experience, Father McManus encouraged, “Don’t see this as how you’re overwhelmed. See this as how you can respond.”
The follow-up presentation delved further into the history of the relationship between Catholics and Jews as well as current concerns. Both the museum visit and the discussions helped us to ponder the question, “Do I see Jews as self or other?” in the hope that we can more respectfully and accurately work against anti-Semitism and teach the Holocaust. Everyone seems eager to learn even more before departing on Friday to “bear witness” for the dead and the living who were affected by the Holocaust. I think we are willing to take on Father McManus’ challenge: “You must not fail.”
